The Tees Valley Review (TVR) builds towards its climax at the end of September. For those unfamiliar with the process, the review was commissioned by then Levelling Up cabinet minister, Michael Gove in June 2023, following allegations of corruption at the Teesworks project. Gove commissioned a panel led by former senior civil servant, Angie Ridgwell to review the oversight by the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) over the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) and the Teesworks Joint Venture (TJV).
Ridgwell Report
The panel reported back to Michael Gove, and was published on 29 January 2024, although it was leaked to local Conservative MPs several days previously so that they could put a positive spin on it. The TVR contained 28 recommendations to improve governance, scrutiny and accountability at the TVCA.
Ben Houchen’s re-election campaign
On 7 March, Conservative Levelling Up minister Michael Gove wrote to Conservative Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen to tell him that he was “encouraged to hear that TVCA, STDC and TJV” were ‘working collaboratively’ on the TVR.” Gove was so encouraged that he decided that Houchen could park his response to the TVR until September 2024, conveniently well beyond the date of the Tees Valley Mayoral Election on 2 May 2024. The brave new world of the TVCA could wait.
Troubleshooting the TVCA
And so the statutory officers of the TVCA set to work on their reforms with the alacrity that we would expect. The event that had, more than any other, triggered the investigation into the TVCA was the discovery, by Private Eye and others, of an agreement made on 18 August 2021. This suddenly transferred ownership of the TJV project, also known as Teesworks Ltd, from a 50/50 public/private sector split to 90/10 ownership by four private individuals.
What a carve up
So Teesworks was suddenly owned by four hitherto unknown property developers. Chris Musgrave with the lion’s share (40%), then Martin Corney and Ian Waller with 19.35% each. Planning guru Chris Harrison trailed in fourth place with 6.3%. And yet it took 14 months from the announcement of the TVR, and 7 months from the publication of Angie Ridgwell’s report, for TVCA Group Chief Executive, Julie Gilhespie to write to the Joint Venture partners to ask for a renegotiation of a better settlement for taxpayers.
No sense of timing
Gilhespie wrote to the JV partners on 5 August 2024.The partners replied two days later, and a meeting was arranged for 8 August 2024, followed by a letter from Gilhespie to the partners the following day, and finally a proposal from the JV partners on 17 September 2024. After all of this huffing and puffing, there wasn’t going to be much renegotiation from the partners. As the Financial Times reported, they weren’t going to budge on the key issue, their 90% ownership of the scheme, but they would concede on one thing – their option period to draw down land on the site would be reduced from 30 to 15 years “to avoid any further negative publicity”. As Newsnight journalist, Victoria Derbyshire had earlier put it, the private developers saw Ben Houchen coming a mile off.
The doctor will see you now
As a public relations stunt to back up their hardball approach, the JV partners commissioned a glowing testimonial from Dr Walter Boettcher of Colliers estate agents. Hopefully, Colliers aren’t too compromised by being estate agents for the Teesworks project. The title of Dr Boettcher’s report – “Teesworks ‘The Silicon Valley of Net Zero’” is, in itself, a prime example of the hyperbole that we have come to expect from anything to do with the Teesworks project. The report can be found in the ‘further reading’ section at the end of this article.
Lies, damned lies, and Dr Boettcher’s report
What’s the doctor’s diagnosis? Private sector interest of £10.6 billion, including £4.96 billion committed. I’ll have to stop you there, doctor. You’ve included an investment by BP/Equinor in a gas-fired carbon-capture power station. But you know that this money hasn’t been committed yet because they haven’t made their Final Investment Decision. What else have you got? A £79mn per annum boost to business rates? But the TVCA’s own analysis of business rates lists a range from £34.9 (cautious) to £72.4mn (optimistic). What’s next? Oh, a prediction of 20,452 future jobs, an unnervingly specific prediction. Well I debunked this Houchenesque exaggeration only last month using actual statistics. If the TVCA has created zero jobs over more than seven years, Dr Boettcher’s predictions for future job gains are worthless.
A rush job
But, back to the proposal from the JV Partners to the TVCA, made on 17 September. The TVCA had set up a series of five committee meetings, starting on 4 September, right through to the Cabinet meeting on 27 September, at which their proposed response to the 28 recommendations of the TVR would be considered. This careful choreography has been disrupted by the timing of the letter from the JV Partners. The two key committees – Audit & Governance (AGC) and Oversight & Scrutiny (OSC), had already met by the time that the letter was published. The chairs of both committees were forced to convene hasty informal meetings in the days prior to the Cabinet meeting. Given the short notice, both meetings were poorly attended. Councillor Nicky Walker (AGC) and councillor Steve Nelson (OSC) verbally reported on their respective meetings to the Cabinet meeting on 27 September, expressing their dissatisfaction with this shambles. We’ve heard a non-stop mantra from Ben Houchen and his TVCA colleagues over the past year that lessons have been learned from the TVR, but this episode belies this.
Audit, governance, overview, and scrutiny
But, what of the process by which the committee members would review the TVCA response to the 28 recommendations of the TVR throughout September? A staggering amount of documentation, which nobody could hope to digest within the time available. Some attempts were made to cope with the information overload. Councillor Ian Haszeldine of the OSC had moved, at their 4 September meeting, to defer consideration of the TVR until later in the month to provide additional time to review the documentation. But the motion was defeated. The minutes of this meeting can be found in the ‘further reading’ section at the end of this article. The sheer amount of paperwork presented to each committee is worth putting on the record:
- TVCA OSC, 4 September, 844 pages
- STDC AGC, 6 September, 803 pages
- TVCA AGC, 16 September, 822 pages
- STDC Board, 26 September, 885 pages
- TVCA Cabinet, 27 September, 845 pages (TVR appendices alone. Plus 20 other documents)
Ben Houchen’s boost to the Teesside stationery industry
A FOI request has revealed the following order from the TVCA to the Acme Stationery Company:
- 1,000 reams of A4 paper
- 100 print cartridges
- 100 boxes of paper clips
- 20 staplers and 100 boxes of staples
- 50 bottles of ‘Redact-o’ correction fluid
- 50 rubber stamps (one for each committee member)
Contrary to rumours, no brown envelopes were ordered.
The final straight
Two meetings held on Thursday and Friday, 26 and 27 September, marked the finale of the TVCA’s big month, after which Ben Houchen would submit the TVCA’s formal response to the TVR to HM Government. The first of these was the STDC Board meeting. Julie Gilhespie presented the agenda Item relevant to the TVR. This included an extensive verbal timeline of work undertaken by the TVCA in the period from the publication of the review on 29 January 2024 to the present day. Nobody seemed quite sure why so much time was taken on this presentation, which included 44 separate events, and which could simply have been presented as an appendix to the agenda papers. The exercise could be interpreted as a needy appeal for praise for work which any executive would be expected to perform as part of their everyday duties. The board accepted the TVCA proposals, with the exemption of independent member, Kevin Shakesheff who abstained on the basis that he hadn’t had sufficient time to digest the amount of information provided.
TVCA Cabinet, Friday 27 September
This was the final event of the TVR scrutiny process. Julie Gilhespie again led on the TVR. And again, inexplicably, trotted through the 44-event timeline of the review from 29 January onwards. Given that Cabinet members include the Mayor of Middlesbrough, and the leaders of both Stockton-on-Tees and Redcar and Cleveland Councils, all of whom are trying to lead their own organisations through severe funding crises, this seems an unconscionable waste of everybody’s time. Then followed the most heated part of the meeting. Middlesbrough Mayor Chris Cooke tried to move a change to the TVCA constitution, to remove the mayoral casting vote. Ben Houchen didn’t like the idea of this. Why would anybody want a change in how the TVCA is governed? Angie Ridgwell & co would probably beg to differ.
Moving forward
Julie Gilhespie confirmed that a Local Government Association (LGA) panel will meet for the first time on 30 September, to plan the implementation of the TVR recommendations over the next six months. This panel will be led by the TVCA’s Business Director Helen Kemp. The Cabinet accepted the TVCA proposals regarding the TVR. A summary of the proposals can be found in the ‘further reading’ section at the end of this article. The detailed appendices are listed below the summary, for those suffering from insomnia.
Lap of honour
Ben Houchen wasted no time taking a lap of honour. Within an hour of the Cabinet meeting closing, he’d sent a letter that he’d already drafted to the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, crowing that “All of these changes have been unanimously approved by all of our cross-party statutory committees, the cross-party STDC Board, and the TVCA Cabinet, which is made up of myself and the five Labour local authority leaders. I look forward to hearing your response and welcome the opportunity to continue to work positively with this government to bring success to Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.”. So how will Angela Rayner respond to this bi-partisan love-fest? To be continued….
Thanks to James Waterson for providing additional research for this article
Further Reading
STDC Board Papers, 26 September 2024
(includes “Teesworks ‘The Silicon Valley of Net Zero’” report by Dr Walter Boettcher)
Minutes of OSC meeting, 4 September 2024
Tees Valley Review – summary of recommendations
Tees Valley Review – detailed appendices
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